As a rule, there are three reasons to buy or rent a DVD. The first is because you missed the movie in the theater and want to check it out. The second is because you saw the movie in the theater, fell in love with it and absolutely need to see it again. The third incorporates the reasons in number two, then adds your compulsion to watch the DVD extras.
Yet Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow adds a fourth reason: because the DVD release is the only way to see the one aspect of the film that?s worth watching, the bonus features.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is an astounding technological achievement, a movie filmed entirely in front of a blue screen and completed, rather amazingly, with computer-generated imagery. Nearly everything in the film, save for the actors themselves, is a fake. An incredibly believable fake, but a fake nonetheless. It?s this treatment that gives the film its period-piece feel, even in spite of its inclusion of futuristic vehicles and robots.
For all their technological capabilities, though, the blue screens are ultimately the film?s undoing. Jude Law, Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow are all capable actors, but like every actor in Hollywood, they?re used to performing on an interactive set. Delivering a line, no matter its tone, is easier to do if you?re outside the vacuum. Props, traffic, wind, sun, dozens of extras … these types of things make the performance more believably. Without them, as evidenced this film, the performance falls almost universally flat.
But that?s why this film introduces the fourth reason listed above, because the DVD extras are really the part of Sky Captain most worth watching. Without those extras, in fact, it?s highly likely the film will leave an entirely bad taste in your movie-going mouth.
The story behind Sky Captain is almost as fantastic as its technological achievements: a couple of guys using a home PC to realize their vision. The two-part behind-the-scenes documentary explains the entire tale, but suffice it to say it tells a real-life story of The Little Director That Could. Vision becomes storyboard, storyboard becomes digitized, digitization becomes short, and short becomes big-studio film. Truly, if the bonus features don?t make you cheer for aspiring moviemakers everywhere, they?ll at the very least make you appreciate the effort put into Sky Captain.
Still, try as they might, those efforts don?t make for a good movie. A good behind-the-scenes story, to be sure, but not a good movie. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a technical wonder. It?s a director?s inspirational story. It?s even a great example of how behind-the-scenes features should be done. But it?s not the best DVD release out there right now. If you?re a hardcore fan of one of the actors, or if you?re a die-hard champion of the ?everyman? moviemaker with a powerful PC, you should check the film out. Everyone else is probably better off leaving this one for ?tomorrow.?
— Jonas Allen
